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# Lead Data Architect - Data Lakes

- **Company:** Albano Systems Inc
- **Location:** Richmond, VA, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Contract:** Temporary contract
- **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Microsoft Azure, Cloud Engineering, Data Architecture, Information Engineering, Data Systems, Data Warehousing, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), High-Level Architecture, JSON, Unstructured Data, Data Lakes, Data Delivery, Api Design, Data Pipelines, Guidewire, Databricks
- **Published:** July 17, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.dice.com/job-detail/12c6f19c-027b-483a-8448-108e9c071cec

## About the Role

* ~7 10 years of progressive experience in data engineering, pipeline development, and data architecture roles developing Data Lakes and Data Warehouses
 * Background progressing from developer through at least team lead
 * Strong experience designing and working with the full lifecycle of data-centric architectures
 * Hands-on experience with cloud development in Databricks
 * Experience with structured and unstructured data (e.g., JSON, files, media)
 * Understanding of both relational and non-relational solutions
 * Understanding of APIs and data integration patterns
 * Strong communication and stakeholder influence skills (written + verbal)
 * Know when to make independent decisions and when to circle back to the broader team with appropriate questions
 * Work within a new domain by identifying gaps in knowledge and actively seeking answers

Preferred Qualifications

 * Experience with Guidewire Insurance Suite data
 * Azure Solutions Architect certification (nice-to-have)
 * Experience working in Property & Casualty insurance data domains
 * An understanding of London and international markets would be a plus

## Description

The Lead Data Architect provides strategic and hands-on leadership across divisional data initiatives, guiding delivery teams in building scalable data solutions within a modern cloud-based data ecosystem. This role balances high-level architecture with practical execution, ensuring data solutions align with business needs, performance requirements, and long-term architecture goals., * As part of a data architecture organization, provide architectural guidance to two or three concurrent data delivery teams (typically 4 5 engineers per team) across data initiatives

 * Design and evolve data architecture across a Databricks-first lakehouse in a broader Azure ecosystem, understanding both target state and appropriate trade-offs
 * Partner with engineering teams to support their detailed solutions and implementation through design reviews, guidance, and targeted hands-on contribution where needed
 * Specify data solutions that meet non-functional requirements (NFRs) such as scalability, performance, and reliability
 * Perform technology evaluations in support of the teams, with appropriate recommendations and reasoning
 * Assess technical challenges and problems, provide options, and make recommendations
 * Guide ingestion and integration strategies, including API-based data exchange
 * Lead without direct reporting authority, influencing teams through expertise and collaboration


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